The Vicars Daughter | Page 4

I were to attempt to tell my history, the result would be as silly a narrative as ever one old woman told another by the workhouse fire."
"And I only wish I could hear the one old woman tell her story to the other," said my father.
"Ah! but that's because you see ever so much more in it than shows. You always see through the words and the things to something lying behind them," I said.
"Well, if you told the story rightly, other people would see such things behind it too."
"Not enough of people to make it worth while for Mr. S. to print it," I said.
"He's not going to print it except he thinks it worth his while; and you may safely leave that to him," said my husband.
"And so I'm to write a book as big as 'The Annals;' and, after I've been slaving at it for half a century or so, I'm to be told it won't do, and all my labor must go for nothing? I must say the proposal is rather a cool one to make,--to the mother of a family."
"Not at all; that's not it, I mean," said Mr. S.; "if you will write a dozen pages or so, I shall be able to judge by those well enough,--at least, I will take all the responsibility on myself after that."
"There's a fair offer!" said my husband. "It seems to me, Wynnie, that all that is wanted of you is to tell your tale so that other people can recognize the human heart in it,--the heart that is like their own, and be able to feel as if they were themselves going through the things you recount."
"You describe the work of a genius, and coolly ask me to do it. Besides, I don't want to be set thinking about my heart, and all that," I said peevishly.
"Now, don't be raising objections where none exist," he returned.
"If you mean I am pretending to object, I have only to say that I feel all one great objection to the whole affair, and that I won't touch it."
They were all silent; and I felt as if I had behaved ungraciously. Then first I felt as if I might have to do it, after all. But I couldn't see my way in the least.
"Now, what is there," I asked, "in all my life that is worth setting down,--I mean, as I should be able to set it down?"
"What do you ladies talk about now in your morning calls?" suggested Mr. Blackstone, with a humorous glance from his deep black eyes.
"Nothing worth writing about, as I am sure you will readily believe, Mr. Blackstone," I answered.
"How comes it to be interesting, then?"
"But it isn't. They--we--only talk about the weather and our children and servants, and that sort of thing."
"_Well!_" said Mr. S., "and I wish I could get any thing sensible about the weather and children and servants, and that sort of thing, for my magazine. I have a weakness in the direction of the sensible."
"But there never is any thing sensible said about any of them,--not that I know of."
"Now, Wynnie, I am sure you are wrong," said my father. "There is your friend, Mrs. Cromwell: I am certain she, sometimes at least, must say what is worth hearing about such matters."
"Well, but she's an exception. Besides, she hasn't any children."
"Then," said my husband, "there's Lady Bernard"--
"Ah! but she was like no one else. Besides, she is almost a public character, and any thing said about her would betray my original."
"It would be no matter. She is beyond caring for that now; and not one of her friends could object to any thing you who loved her so much would say about her."
The mention of this lady seemed to put some strength into me. I felt as if I did know something worth telling, and I was silent in my turn.
"Certainly," Mr. S. resumed, "whatever is worth talking about is worth writing about,--though not perhaps in the way it is talked about. Besides, Mrs. Percivale, my clients want to know more about your sisters, and little Theodora, or Dorothea, or--what was her name in the book?"
The end of it was, that I agreed to try to the extent of a dozen pages or so.

CHAPTER II
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I TRY.
I hope no one will think I try to write like my father; for that would be to go against what he always made a great point of,--that nobody whatever should imitate any other person whatever, but in modesty and humility allow the seed that God had sown in her to grow. He said all imitation tended to dwarf and distort the plant, if it even allowed the seed to germinate at all. So, if I do write like him, it will be because I